


Exchanges

by a_big_apple



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Bath Sex, F/M, M/M, Xing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2018-08-09 02:34:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7783429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_big_apple/pseuds/a_big_apple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written by me and illustrated by bob_fish for enemytosleep's birthday!  </p><p>Ed and Al go to Xing for training after getting their bodies (mostly) back.  Ling is very glad to see Ed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exchanges

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enemytosleep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemytosleep/gifts).



> bob_fish's beautiful art for this fic can be found [here](http://bob-fish.livejournal.com/87021.html)!

_How did this happen?_ Ed finds himself wondering, a bare moment before Lan Fan takes him out at the knees and pins him with a ferocious scowl.  
  
"You have no focus. Stop thinking about His Imperial Highness and pay attention to what I'm teaching you," she reprimands. "You're not here for rolling in straw!"  
  
Ed blinks. "What?"  
  
From somewhere to his left, Al snorts a laugh. "I think you mean 'a roll in the hay.'"  
  
A hot flush flares from the tips of Ed's ears to his neck. " _What?!_ " he chokes. "I wasn't thinking about rolling in anything with that smarmy freeloader!"  
  
"I dunno," Al says contemplatively. "I wouldn't say no to a tumble with the Emper _aaahhh!_ "  
  
A heavy thud heralds Al's arrival on the ground, pinned alongside him. How Lan Fan managed that without letting go of Ed is beyond him, but right now he's really too scandalized to care. Al just grins wickedly, and Lan Fan sighs.  
  
"Your previous teacher was lucky to have you as little boys." She glares at Ed accusingly. "A man is too addled by his _diǎo_ to be any use."  
  
Al howls with laughter, fucking traitor, and Ed tries very, very hard to pretend he doesn't know that word. Nope, not at all.  
  
And anyway, he's really _not_ distracted by his... _diǎo_. He's got enough to think about these days. He's thinking about how hot it is in Xing in the summer, and how the sun is slowly bronzing Al and bleaching his hair, and the effect gives him a healthy glow that warms the cockles of Ed's heart. The sun must be doing the same thing to Ed, but he hasn't much bothered to look in a mirror; still, he's noticed the looks they get around the palace, like two statues from the Xerxian ruins got up and started strolling around.  
  
Life is pretty damn good here, right now, for the brothers Elric. Al can't quite wipe the floor with Ed yet, but he's getting stronger every day. Lan Fan works them just as hard as Teacher ever did, though she's quieter, and Xingese martial arts are really pretty fun in spite of the fucking _archipelagos_ of bruises he and Al are both covered in.  
  
So if life is so good, why does it _suck_ so much when Mei Chang shows up in the hottest part of the afternoon to whisk Al off for alkahestry lessons? One of them should learn it, at least, and given that Ed can't _use_ the fucking Dragon's Pulse--  
  
He looks over at Al where he's pinned to the grass, sweaty and grinning and human.  
  
***  
  
Later, when all he can do is collapse onto the floor in the room he and Al are sharing with three limbs like rubber and the other too heavy to lift right now, he decides it's all Teacher's fault. Teacher's fault for making friends with Lan Fan in the aftermath of the Promised Day, Teacher's fault for beating the crap out of Ed and Al until they agreed to a training trip to Xing to get Al (and, to a lesser degree, Ed) fit and used to their bodies again. Teacher's fault that--well, Ed's not sure how, but it just _has_ to be her fault that Ling is a totally insatiable sex maniac.  
  
Actually, thinking about Teacher in conjunction with Ling's sexual appetites gives Ed's stomach a rather queasy turn. Maybe that's Al's fault somehow.  
  
Al, his precious, innocent, newly-embodied little brother, who emerges from the bath with a silken robe in a deep magenta color wrapped loosely around himself. He scrubs his hair briefly with a towel, then chucks it at Ed's face.  
  
"What the fuck!"  
  
"Bath's free, brother," Al says with a grin. "You smell."  
  
Ed grunts and flings the towel onto the floor. "What's it to you if I smell? Ling doesn't give a shit if I smell."  
  
" _Some_ people," Al answers with his nose in the air, "are a little more _refined_. Trust me, you need a bath if you're gonna have him here tonight."  
  
Spluttering, Ed sits up and glares. "Have him _here?_ In our _room?_ "  
  
"Why not?" Al asks, unconcerned. He's not even looking at Ed, more focused on opening the assortment of little bottles on his bedside table and dabbing himself with fussy liquids and lotions that smell like flowers and fruit and whatever the fuck else. "I won't be here tonight."  
  
Wait, what?  
  
"You won't be here tonight? Where are you going?"  
  
Al pauses with his hand on the door and grins wickedly. "I have a date with the girls."  
  
"The girls?!" Ed screeches, bolting upright. "Dressed like _that?!_ "  
  
"See you tomorrow, brother, don't do anyone I wouldn't do!"  
  
" _AL!!_ "  
  
***  
  
The bed in her room is enclosed in ornately carved dark wood on all sides but one; the open side is framed by heavy, deep red curtains. Izumi regards it with some apprehension. On one hand, the design might provide a feeling of safety in an unfamiliar place. On the other, though, she doesn't much like being boxed in.  
  
Well, there's nothing for it but to nestle into the admittedly sinful silk sheets. Another full day studying with the Imperial Alkahestry Master, practicing healing arrays she can use on herself, has exhausted her. She leaves the curtains open, though, so that she can keep one eye on the door.  
  
Apparently an eye on the door doesn't help in the slightest when it comes to sneaky Imperial Guards. Just as Izumi is starting to doze, she's alerted by the soft slide of a booted foot above her. She holds her breath, listening, and now that she's paying closer attention, she can hear the minute shift of metal on metal and whirs of automail ball joints. The tension in her limbs relaxes immediately.  
  
"How were the boys today?"  
  
"Hopeless." When Izumi opens her eyes, the white of Lan Fan's mask stands out in the dark, hovering upside-down. The guard swings down from her perch on the top of the bed and lands with barely a sound on the mattress, dropping to a relaxed sprawl beside Izumi's legs. "They are extremely...teenaged."  
  
Izumi chuckles and props herself upright with a pillow. "So are you."  
  
Lan Fan looks deeply insulted even behind the mask, and she takes it off to reveal her scowl. "Not _that_ sort of teenaged."  
  
"They'll adjust. Give them some time," Izumi suggests, grinning, "and work them to the bone. You've got to have a firm hand with those boys."  
  
"I'm trying." With a long sigh, Lan Fan collapses back against the mattress. "It's difficult. I am not...used to tasks like this. Training others. Giving orders. The young ma--the _Emperor_ has asked me to take over command of the Guard."  
  
"He's smarter than I gave him credit for, then," Izumi replies, eyes narrowed, "but you don't sound particularly pleased about it."  
  
Lan Fan's mouth twists unhappily. "Most of the Guard have been in Imperial service since before I was born. It's not my place to order them about."  
  
"There's so much hierarchy here," Izumi muses in response, and Lan Fan looks over at her with a questioning expression. "It's great that you respect your elders, and all that, but...well, there are other ways to measure." She nudges the girl's automail arm with her foot. "Sacrifices. Experience. Hard life lessons mean a hell of a lot in this world. There are things that need to be done, and if you're the one who can do them, it doesn't much matter if you're eighteen or eighty." Izumi smiles. "It's something Edward and Alphonse learned a long time ago. Every little life has a part to play, in the scheme of things."  
  
"One is all, all is one," Lan Fan replies, and grins at Izumi's expression. "They told me about that lesson. I think they were trying to convince me to...what's the Amestrian phrase? 'Bring it on?'"  
  
Izumi lets her head fall back against the headboard and just _laughs_.  
  
***  
  
Ed has learned, in the few days he's been here, that the Xingese have a _thing_ about baths. There are huge communal baths in the palace grounds, two for the vast numbers of servants and one for royalty and visiting dignitaries. Apparently Ed and Al count as visiting dignitaries, because they were shown to the men's half of the bath and invited to strip off and hop in, just like that. Like Ed's gonna get naked and wash himself on some funky little stool right out in the open and then get in a hot tub with a bunch of equally naked strangers! Al was gung ho, of course, but he's the tactful one, so he got them out of it when he saw how the vein in Ed's temple was throbbing.  
  
Their room has a mini-version of the communal bath, though, which is just for them, and Ed is starting to understand why everybody here is so into it. The water is just the right side of scalding, the walls and the sides of the pool are painted with sweeping natural scenery, and there are some perfumed oils or something that make Ed's tense muscles unspool as soon as he's ensconced. It's just what he needs after a day of having his ass handed to him by a chick with automail she's only had for...what, a year? Less than that, even. It's a little humiliating that she's more used to her automail than Ed is used to his own real right arm. There's nothing to even out the weight of the leg, anymore, and he's actually grown a little, so his balance is totally shot.  
  
Still, it's heartening to watch Al struggle too, the little twerp. Whatever he's doing with Ling's... _harem_ , Ed hopes he's embarrassing himself with his spazzy long limbs.  
  
Ed has reached the point of relaxation where he’s starting to doze, and in between dozing starting to think that he should get out of the bath before he falls asleep and drowns, when the door between the bathing room and the bedroom slides quietly open. He’s immediately alert--spending your formative years on the road looking for danger and then saving the world can do that to a guy--but the room is so steam-filled that he can’t make out who’s invading his privacy.  
  
“Al?” he calls, hopeful, crossing his arms and legs to cover as much of himself as he can.  
  
“I hear your brother will be occupied all night,” a familiar smarmy voice answers, and Ling comes slinking into view.  
  
His voice is the same as it always was, but as he approaches draped in voluminous layers of heavy silk that glimmers gold in the light, he looks like a different person. His hair is pulled up tight on the top of his head and covered with a funny box-hat that Ed privately thinks looks ridiculous, and he’s got his Emperor face on, severe and distant. Then he grins, breaking the illusion, and he’s just Ling in a crazy outfit.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Ed asks, still awkwardly trying to cover all his private bits, though it’s not as if Ling hasn’t seen them before. “Don’t you run the country in the evenings too?”  
  
Ling shrugs. “I’m the Emperor. I can slip away when I want to.” He stops just at the edge of the pool, and reaches up to pull out the stick that holds the box hat onto his hair; he tosses the hat and the stick onto the floor with a clank, pulls a tie from his top knot, and shakes his hair out until it falls down his back and into his face. “And tonight, when I heard you’d have your room to yourself, well.” He slips his feet out of his shoes, gently curled up at the toe and gleaming with gold embroidery, and loses at least an inch in height. “I wanted to.”  
  
“What are you doing?” Ed squeaks, though he has a sneaking suspicion, and Ling’s grin widens a fraction.  
  
“This outfit is an antique, Edward, it’s been passed down through the Imperial line for three hundred years. It can’t get wet.” With a sinuous rotation of his shoulders, he shrugs off the outer-most robe; heavy shining silk and curling dragons picked out in gold thread slide into a careless puddle of fabric on the floor at Ling’s feet.  
  
“If it’s an antique, shouldn’t you, maybe, hang it up or something?” Ed presses, but his mouth has gone a bit dry, and his voice cracks in the middle.  
  
Casually, Ling reaches behind himself. A moment later the wide belt holding his under robes closed falls away, sliding to the floor to join the rest. With one more tug of a tie at his waist, the remaining layers begin to fall open, revealing a long expanse of muscled torso and a dark trail of hair leading from his belly button down, down...

Ed gulps, crossing his legs more tightly to hide his... _intense_ interest in the proceedings. Ling, the bastard, just smirks and drops the last two layers to the floor in one fell swoop, revealing long muscled legs and a slowly hardening cock between them. Utterly unconcerned with his nakedness, Ling steps down into the bath and sinks onto a seat beside Ed. A moment later, fingers creep up the outside of his thigh.  
  
"Ed, you're so tense! The hot water's supposed to _relax_ you."  
  
"I thought the Emperor was supposed to be all mature and serious and shit."  
  
Ling grins, fond and smoldering at once, and hooks his knee over Ed's lap. "That's just when I'm working. Pretend that was Greed, and now I'm Ling again." He rocks his hips gently against Ed's thigh, and Ed's suddenly finding it difficult to breathe.  
  
"This is a lot warmer than we ever were then," he points out, but it's a token protest; his hands are already gripping Ling's waist without his permission.  
  
"Oh, don't be silly," Ling replies, spreading his legs to press closer. "You've always lit my fire."  
  
Then he leans in to catch Ed's bark of laughter in his mouth.  
  
***  
  
"Mmm, oh _fuck_..."  
  
"Ah...I missed your dirty mouth," Ling sighs, then shudders and clings hard to Ed as he comes.  
  
Ed's not far behind, with a shout that echoes obscenely in the tiled room. "Damn," he pants, slumping back against the side of the bath. "I kinda forgot."  
  
"Forgot what?" Ling asks drowsily, laying his head on Ed's shoulder. "Didn't feel like you'd forgotten anything."  
  
Ed snorts. "Forgot how good that is. It's nice to have _something_ be the same."  
  
Ling yawns, mouthing the corner of Ed's jaw as he does, and Ed shivers. "Things change," Ling murmurs into his ear. "It's the way of the world. Though I suppose _I'll_ stay the same. I'll be young forever, or as long as the Philosopher's stone lasts."  
  
"Hey, if you've got a couple of thousand years, you might get a little smarter." Ling pinches Ed's nipple without remorse, and Ed gasps out a laugh. "Hey!"  
  
"And what tales of the Fullmetal Alchemist will I be telling a thousand years from now?" Ling's tracing patterns on Ed's chest now, over the scars where the automail port was screwed in, and Ed blows a breath out through his nose.  
  
"You know them already," Ed murmurs, closing his eyes. "The Fullmetal Alchemist is retired."  
  
A stretch of silence follows, and Ling nestles closer against Ed's side. "How disappointing. I've already commissioned a permanent display case in the Imperial library for the collected alchemical writing of the famous Elric Brothers. I'd rather hoped you would fill it for me."  
  
Ed considers this for a long time, staring at the painted ceiling of the bathroom and tangling his fingers in Ling's wet hair. "Huh," he finally replies. "Just how big is this display case?"  
  
***  
  
They train for two hours before breakfast every morning, but this is the first morning when Ed feels...well, _good_. Ready for the day, ready to learn something new. The sun is shining, fucking _birds_ are chirping, and he has an awful lot of work left ahead of him. He grins a little wickedly when Al comes shuffling back in with hair like a bird's nest and his robe sliding off one shoulder. He grins with a hint of red at the tips of his ears when the Emperor, in different finery today, appears with a flock of guards around him to watch the morning workout.  
  
He's so distracted by Ling that Al catches him off balance and face plants him into the dirt.  
  
"Gotcha!" Al crows, plopping down on the small of Ed's back. "Finally!"  
  
Ed grins so hard he might just break his face.


End file.
